Climate Change and HR Directors

7th April 202012:00 am3rd April 202011:56 am

As a company, we’re evolving Epoints to help fight climate change, as such are defining the ‘E’ in Epoints to stand for ‘Eco’. Employees using the platform, will shortly be able to donate points to fund climate change initiatives. Because of this climate change focus, we attended Employee Benefits Connect in February 2020 in London. We did this to discuss the topic of climate change with HR professionals.‘Employee Benefits Connect is a unique and interactive live platform. It’s for reward professionals to come together to discover the future of reward and to promote blue-sky thinking for the years ahead.’ This one day brings together senior HR professionals to talk about future practices and initiatives.

Our CEO, Matt Norbury, hosted three roundtable huddles at Employee Benefits Connect 2020. He did this as a way to learn from HR professionals and influencers, outside of our existing Reward & Recognition client base. This was to gauge their views on climate change within their industries. The overwhelming consensus from HR leaders was the need to do more than they are. There is a distinct lack of easy to implement solutions for HR to positively drive climate change initiatives.

Some key highlights from the climate change discussionsinclude:

● Employees are leading the way rather than waiting for their Employers to catch up. Employee driven initiatives such as fundraising, tree planting, and community initiatives around recycling are being implemented off their own backs.
● Businesses seem to be crying out for something that can help them become more eco-friendly on a tangible scale.
● Boards and senior stakeholders are demanding to see initiatives in action. The finger is being pointed at HR to lead getting climate as part of wider sustainability strategy across the whole business.
● As well as no plug and play solutions. HR leaders are searching for clarity on what actually is good for the planet due to lots of conflicting information on the topic. One HR Director said they were recently challenged to stop people working from home. If they’re the only person in their house and the distance to travel to the office isn’t far. Due to the negative impact of having the heating turned on at home, whilst the office is already fully heated. Others complained
they started recycling tea-bags only to be told the plastic lining on some tea-bags aren’t recyclable! “We need education from a trusted source”.

From these discussions…
We came to the conclusion that many HR influencers are embarrassed to say, they’re not doing anything for the climate change cause. Reporting is really crucial to make sure that companies aren’t seen to be supporting climate change initiatives just for their brand image or good PR. Corporations are conscious they need to see results of the schemes they’re rolling out throughout their company. Things like annual reports and real-time data to produce unarguable
results is essential to measuring success rates across a broader scale.

So how can Each Person help with climate change?

We wanted to align ourselves with climate change so, with Each Person, employees benefit from membership to Eco-points, the exclusive discount shopping platform. Eco-points is a simple vehicle that can make a big difference to a complex problem. In addition to receiving extra savings off the lowest online prices, members can give some of this extra saving to fund Eco-projects. You will still save money whilst saving the planet. epoints can be gifted to Eco-projects to tackle climate change head-on.

To reflect our own commitment to this vital initiative; we’re also donating 5% of our profits to the scheme. Eco-points: a simple and powerful way for our members to make a difference in the fight for a cleaner, greener and lower carbon future.